Kate’s cab had driven off, and the two girls walked through Lafayette Square into Pennsylvania Avenue to get another.  The wide streets were filled, as of old, with skurrying orderlies, groups of lounging officers, and lumbering army wagons.  But even the untrained eyes of Olympia soon took account of the better discipline, the more businesslike celerity of the men on duty as well as the flying couriers.  The White House was gay with hunting, and salutes from the distant forts were signalizing the news that had just come of Union successes at Mill Spring and Roanoke Island.  The girls, procuring a hack, were driven to the provost-general’s office.  Here, after an interminable delay they were admitted to the presence of a complacent young coxcomb in spotless regimentals, who, so soon as he saw Olympia’s face and bearing, threw off the listlessness of routine, and, rising deferentially, asked her pleasure.  She told her story simply, and asked his advice as to the course to be followed.  When the extract from the Herald was shown to him, he examined an enormous folio, and then rang a bell.

“It is more than likely that these names are wrong.  This happens constantly.  The operators are raw and some of them can barely read.  The names are given hurriedly, and if not written plainly they make wretched work of them.  The newspapers make many a fool famous, while neglecting many a hero who deserves fame, simply through the blundering or carelessness of the writers or operators.  Here is an orderly who will take you to the surgeon-general.  You will find in his books the names of all the wounded in hospital in the Eastern armies.  But if your brother was wounded or brought in wounded at Fort Monroe, his name will be on the books of the Army of the Potomac or the Department of Eastern Virginia.”

They were treated with the same deferential gallantry at the surgeon-general’s office; the young doctors, indeed, became almost obtrusive in their eagerness to spare the young women the drudgery of scrutinizing the long lists of invalids.  But, after two days’ careful search, no names resembling Sprague or Perley could be found.

“I wonder who this can be?” Kate said, returning to an entry made a month before:  “Jones, Warchester; Caribee Regiment.”

“I know no one of that name,” Olympia said, “but perhaps he might know something of Jack.  Let us go to him.  It will do no harm to find out who he is.”

The surgeon’s clerk readily gave them Jones’s address, reminding them that the hospital was in Georgetown, and that they would be too late to obtain entrance to the patient that day.  Next morning Mrs. Sprague was too ill to rise from her bed, and Olympia could not leave her alone.  Kate undertook the investigation into the Jones affair alone.  When she reached the hospital there was some delay before she could see the personage intrusted with the admission of guests.  She was shown into an office on the ground-floor and given a seat.  As she sat, distraught and eager, she heard her own name in the next room, the door of which stood open: